The total number of economic water-dependent assets in the preliminary assessment extent (PAE) of the Maranoa-Balonne-Condamine subregion is 310 (comprising 10,825 elements). This includes 829 surface water access entitlements and 9977 groundwater access entitlements. It is important to make a distinction between ‘actual use’ (measured as metred use) and ‘entitlement’, which is an amount assigned to the user but not necessarily extracted. Surface water access entitlements have a total share component of 16,501 ML/year and groundwater access entitlements have a total share component of 344,518 ML/year. Queensland also collects data by area of land that can be irrigated in ha/year, which is additional to the volume that can be extracted in ML/year. This is 9753 ha/year for surface water access entitlements and 1598 ha/year for groundwater access entitlements. There are also six surface water elements and 13 groundwater elements classed as ‘Water supply and monitoring infrastructure’ that have been identified by the Water Asset Information Tool (WAIT) database in South East Queensland.
Share components are a specified share or volume of water that can be extracted within a specified water management area. Total share components include basic landholder rights described in water sharing plans (WSPs) (NSW Department of Primary Industries, 2014). Water access entitlements for surface water and groundwater include basic landholder rights described in the WSPs for NSW, which are also classed as ‘Basic water right (stock and domestic)’.
Water access rights that do not require a works approval are included in the water-dependent asset register by assigning the water access right to the water source area (polygon). Seven water access rights (6409 ML/year) without corresponding work approvals are located in the Border Rivers Regulated Rivers. These seven water access rights have been amalgamated to one element and one asset.
Within the asset database, every ‘Water access right’ and ‘Basic water right (stock and domestic)’ is an element, and elements are grouped by type and spatial location to create assets (see Section 1.3.1.2).
Table 13 shows the breakdown of water access entitlements (economic elements) for surface water and groundwater in the PAE of the Maranoa-Balonne-Condamine subregion.
Table 12 Summary of the economic elements within the preliminary assessment extent (PAE) of the Maranoa-Balonne-Condamine subregion
Dataa: Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 2, Dataset 3, Dataset 4, Dataset 5), NSW Office of Water (Dataset 6), Australian Government Department of the Environment (Dataset 7)
aThe asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 1) is a collation of all these source datasets.
Table 13 Total share components for surface water and groundwater access entitlements
aThe asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 1) is a collation of all these source datasets. Please note these figures exclude the volume of 250 licences in the Central Lockyer Valley without volumetric limits at this time. The metred groundwater use for the 2009 to 2010 period was 6046 ML/year (Dataset 8)
The locations of the economic assets (i.e. the grouped elements) are shown in Figure 9 (surface water access entitlements), Figure 10 (groundwater water access entitlements) and Figure 11 (water supply and monitoring infrastructure assets).
